When Kristen ran away from home, she planned to drive and just keep driving, but freezing rain has forced her off the road and into The Evergreen. The cozy inn is tucked deep in the forest beneath the shadow of a mountain, and completely empty aside from Kristen and the secretive family that owns it. Chased from her room into the lobby by insomnia and an eerie scratching noise at her window, Kristen befriends Jamie, the owners’ morose teenage daughter, and it isn’t long before the two are exchanging ghost stories by the fire. Jamie tells Kristen about the Red Wolf, a local legend that might be more than a legend after all. Nobody knows what the Red Wolf is, exactly–a ghost, a monster, a thing for which there is no name–but they know it eats kids left alone in the forest at night. They know it steals their voices. They know that if it comes in the shape of its prey, crying at the grieving family’s door, those who let it in are never seen again. Jamie tells Kristen all this, and then tells her the worst of it: the Red Wolf is real. It’s stalked Jamie’s family for months now. And tonight may be the night Jamie finally lets it in.